How racist would a victorious central powers Germany be?

zhropkick

Banned
People like to say the German Empire was better than Nazi Germany, and while that's definitely true the German Empire was not a shining example of humanitarian good will and racial tolerance. Before the Russo-Japanese War, Willy II egged on the Tsar of Russia by making speeches and sending him letters calling him the saviour of the white race and hilariously talking about the Japanese trying to "ensure the domination of the Yellow Race in East Asia" where the "yellow race" lives like it was a bad thing. Of course, almost all of the European powers at the time were not exempt from talking about this and acting out global white domination in places that white people don't even live, but then you get to the Septemberprogramm.

Put the Germans in a war for a few months and they start mouthing off about turning Eastern Europe into a colony and ethnically cleansing a large strip of Poland immediately after victory just for the hell of it. Not sure what Balts and Poles had to do with Tsarist Russia honouring its alliance with Serbia but sure Germany, you do you. Also putting those people under German sovereignty "for all time". The Nazis didn't make any of this stuff up, they just liked the idea.

How nasty would Germany's behaviour be if it had actually won WW1? Would it end up backtracking and not doing this stuff once it realised how much effort ethnically cleansing a huge strip of Poland in an already war-torn Europe would be? How would it treat non-whites in the long run? I have a feeling the Septemberprogramm might not be totally put into action, but still Germany winning would probably make the world a lot more racist, and for longer than it was in our timeline. Sure, the Americans fought the Nazis with black soldiers segregated from white soldiers and liked it that way, but the French and the Anglos cared about liberalism way more than the German Empire would have and eventually ended up asking themselves what they were treating other races like human garbage for, whereas Germany not only didn't care about liberalism on the same level as these nations, but was actively politically reactionary since 1871.
 
They create a little ethnically pure Poland they dominate and take parts of they probably create some sort of Eastern European (co-prosperity sphere) with the Germans at the top and teach their children that eastern Europeans aren't as smart or cultured as them and need their guidance, they also probably kick the Polish people out of Germany and into that little Poland, which becomes quite densely populated.

They probably outright annex Livonia and force German languagee on it.
 
but the French and the Anglos cared about liberalism way more than the German Empire would have and eventually ended up asking themselves what they were treating other races like human garbage for, whereas Germany not only didn't care about liberalism on the same level as these nations, but was actively politically reactionary since 1871.

There is no direct correlation between Liberalism and anti-racism, Napoleon was a liberal, but brought back slavery, the US was the most liberal state in the world and still maintained slavery and segregation. I think that there is no bigger characteristic in Germany that could make them more racist than France or Britain for example.

Wrong forum BTW.
 
A CP victory would not make for a nice 1920s, that's for sure.
But without downplaying the racism of the Septemberprogramm, of the Alldeutscher Verein and of vast swaths of Wilhelmine Germany in general, I suppose a victorious Kaiserreich would be, first and foremost, imperialist, not so very different from other empires, only perhaps acting this way openly and brazenly at a time when other, more established imperial powers were already questioning the whole concept a bit more and trying to tone it down. In areas annexed to the Empire, state domains would be divided up between whoever Willy feels gratitude towards, while the rest likely stays the same. Speakers of Polish and Lithuanian would vote (probably for their own parties, see Kola Polskie) and be voted into the Prussian and Imperial parliaments, and continue to protest against government policies favouring German-speakers and Germanization. With regards to possible satellite states like the United Baltic Duchy, or a Kingdom of Lithuania under an Württembergian King Mindaugas II., they would probably behave like the Brits behaved towards the Hashemites or the Persian Shahs, or the Imperial Russians had behaved towards the Khans of Khiva and Bukhara.
While there was certainly a lot of open and ugly racism in Wilhelmine Germany, and not yet very strong counter-forces (although Social Democrats and to some extent the Centre did speak out against racism), I doubt that Nazi Germany and WW2 are a good blueprint for trying to understand a post-CP victory German-dominated Eastern Europe.
 

zhropkick

Banned
Wrong forum BTW.
fug fug fug fug just realised, was reading through threads here before clicking the post button and was thinking about the German Empire before it wrecked itself in WW1, I have a pea brain
if I report it will mods move it?
 
The Septemberprogramme wasn't official government policy, it was a wishlist of talking points floating around in the few weeks where it looked like Germany might win by Christmas, it wasn't talked about by 1915. Like all powers German war aims, political positions and public statements changed with the ebb and flow of the fortunes of the war, you could just as easily say that the Reichstag peace resolution of july 1917 is the measure of German intent rather than the Septemberprogramme.

Further, the actions in Poland by Ober Ost during the war bear little relationship with what a liberalised postwar German civilian government would do during peacetime.

So to our 2018 eyes the victorious CP on the 20s would look racist as fuck, just like every other democracy at the time. Its not very useful to look at historical polities through the moral lens of 2018: while we decry the racism they may rightly decry things like teen suicide due cyber bullying or the distorting effects of internet porn as moral failures.
 
Top